As AR starts to take root in some key aspects of our lives I thought it would be useful to collect below some of the best talks (yes physical presentations vs overt demos) in the Gamified / Augmented Life space. These are thought leader presentations asking the key questions about why, how, should we, who for and so on. Some talks are a couple of years old (with many from TED) but they need to be seen by upcoming AR & Experience Creators as these passionate presentations look backwards but mostly forwards to our soon-to-be-enhanced lives – through this inevitable, always-with-us, digital overlay.

The speakers are writers, inventors, company owners, commentators and all go that one important step beyond where we are now which is an AR oil rush where no one has quite found the oil (yet) but there is certainly lots of planting flags in the ground where they reckon the best oil deposits are…I could go on with that tangent but might save it for my own lil talk next week at the Augmented Reality Event but for now lets get to it, on with the proper talks (in no particular order!)…of course I probably missed the most important ones – thats what the comment box is for 🙂

Google + users pressing +1 over 2.5 billion times every day Source Jul-11

ABOUT Living statistics – Many of us who have been following social media since the early 90s are very sensitive to today’s exponential growth in usage of the sharing web. Inspired by other cool real time counters, Social Media Industry Head, Laurel Papworth, my own Rise & Rise of Social Media presentations and various ‘cool’ videos (you know the ones) I decided to put together this little Flash app (which is in constant development) showing how active & dynamic the Social Web, Mobile Industry and Game Business is.

If you want to embed this on your page just click the button in the bottom left of the app to copy the code to your clipboard OR use the code/s in the boxes at the bottom of this post. Drag select it all then copy/paste into any site. Use this code as I will be regularly updating it with latest stats.

Doing a bunch of ARG consultancy and while creating lists of user journey options thought I would create this nice little app to help exercise those ‘cross media’ muscles or drive you bonkers. It is a work in progress (what isn’t nowadays) and many more ‘user journey’ options will be added, an auto button and almost done, a genre selector (which adds some story bits). Kind of an auto ARG creator eventually 🙂

Instructions:

Choose ‘auto’ (default) and just watch it in veg out mode

Choose ‘manual’ then click the top right red button for each of the ‘next’ steps

Choose ‘about’ for a little description…

(in progress) A Cross Media User Journey…should describe the route a user takes through a complex multi platform service. It can refer to their thought processes, the actions they take at various points, the story fragments that are revealed at each junction as they travel across a plethora of channels, devices and forms. It often captures the essence of their UX, user experience and is often displayed as a complex chart.

This application, for amusement only, takes us on an endless Alternate Reality Game like User Journey.